Back to the Past
by Sun's Rays
Summary: Eight years after the series takes place, Josh and Parker are living in an apartment and have found themselves less succesful than their adult friends. After Josh uncovers their old time machine in Scaunchboro Mall, he gets more than he bargains for. An extent from the Episode Geezers. This is my first fanfic please read and review! Rated T just in case. Mr. Meaty


Failure, _muttered voices in his head that could easily be confused as wind. _Failure. _It was all coming back to him. There he was, standing behind the cashier's counter, grinning flirtatiously at a female customer as his kitchen aid and best pal was screaming nonsense at an installed camera. Little did he know that his new date would ignore him as soon as he asked her out, as half of them did. He saw himself again, this time not behind a counter, but behind the steering wheel of an upturned van. Trying to refrain from freaking out, he turned shakily toward the driving instructor beside him, giving him pleasant grin despite the heat of the moment. "Well," he said nonchalantly. "Did I pass?" The driver's education teacher looked at him with a look of shock mingled with fury. _

"Did you pass?" _he repeated, his face as white as his beard. "NO, YOU DID _NOT_ PASS!" he screamed, slapping the dashboard at the word 'not.' "HOW COULD YOU EVEN THINK THAT? YOU ARE A MANIAC, AND YOU DRIVE LIKE A MANIAC!" _

"_Please!" whined Josh. "I need to give my girlfriend this one ride!" _

"_No!" spat the teacher. "By now that girl would be wise enough to forget about you and your silly little ride. No wonder she's had her eyes on another man. You're the worst one she's ever met! You won't get anywhere in life!" _

"_No… that can't be true…" muttered Josh. The next thing he knew there was a squirrel up against his ear, chewing on his hair. "BUZZ OFF!" Instead of running away with a chorus of chortles as most squirrels would do, the cute, uppity little squirrel bared it's teeth and snarled. Its color faded quite dramatically from coconut brown to gray to pitch black, with long white strips layering the creature's now unkempt fur. Obviously the creature was no longer a squirrel. _

_Despite being upside- down at the moment, Josh was somehow able to undo his seatbelt and scoot as far away from the skunk as he possibly could. He turned to face the instructor and gasped. In the place of his driver's education teacher was a twenty eight year old Ken, dressed neatly in a freshly ironed suit and a nice gold wedding ring gleaming on his finger. Ken smirked at his shocked brother. "Still don't want to be like me, oh brother dearest?" He then grabbed a fist full of Josh's hair and shoved his face toward the skunk. Josh tried to squirm out of his brother's grasp, but found he couldn't even move. The skunk mutant had already turned his bushy tail towards his face. Paralyzed , Josh watched his fate being planned before his own eyes. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" He screamed as he received a full blast in the face. _

Josh woke with a he was still being sprayed. Realizing that he could move again, he took all his renewed force and punched the skunk in the face. "ARGH!" someone cried out in pain. In the dark, Josh could see someone rolling on the ground. Coming to realization, he realized it was all just a dream.

"Parker?" he called out timidly. "You alright there, buddy?" In response, there was a groan and a weak "Maybe." Josh groaned and smothered his face with his pillow in a mixture of annoyance with himself and somewhat strain from the dream. From underneath the pillow, Josh could hear Parker getting to his feet. There was a click, which indicated that Parker had turned the lamp on.

"You know," said Parker. "You kept on yelling out in your sleep. I thought maybe you could have been having a nightmare or something."

"Well, what do you think?" retorted Josh, his voice slightly muffled by his pillow. "No, it _wasn't _a nightmare I was having, just a very _pretty_ dream about sunshine and rainbows and pink stuff, it was so _fabulous _that I just had to yell out in horror to show my "pleasure'!"

Of course, Parker was at least smart enough to detect the sarcasm dripping from Josh's voice. In his defense, he said, "Well since, I haven't really heard of anyone in history who screams in horror while they're happy, I just thought I might as well come over here and try to wake you up."

Josh threw the pillow always from his face and sat bolt upright in bed. "By blowing in my face, Parker? Well geez, apparently that was just the perfect time to do it too!" Parker sighed. In the past eight years, it had not changed that Josh was not a morning person.

"Well, in case you haven't noticed, I didn't wake you up by punching you in the face to wake you up, so it seems like _somebody_ outta consider other people's feelings for a change!" Josh watched Parker and thought he caught a quick glance of Parker's famous lip quiver, then Parker bit his lip and clenched both fists. Even now Parker still got emotional from time to time, but he really didn't burst out sobbing like he used to. Right now though, Parker seem like he was about to cross the border to that method. Josh immediately came to his friend's aid to be the best friend he was. (And OK, maybe Josh didn't want Parker to cause mayhem at four in the morning, because based on past experiences, Josh knew that Parker could wake up a whole floor with his bawling.)

He put his hand on his friend's shoulder. "Hey man," he said in a friendlier tone of voice. "Hold it together, alright?"

Parker turned on him. "Hey, _I'm_ fine," he said. "What I want to know is what were you dreaming about anyways?"

Josh turned away from Parker. He didn't know why he was being so sensitive about all this. So what if his dream told him he was a failure? It was a dream, now he was in reality, and he would move onto better things. Then something hit him. He just now remembered how as teenagers, he and Parker had been visited by their ninety-six-year-old selves via time machine, their older selves claiming to have never made that 'Ninja Zombies' movie that they had worked on as teenagers. Even though they seemed likely to live to be centenarians, the elderly Josh and Parker were very unsuccessful and unmarried. The message that they were trying to send to Josh and Parker was to alert them that they were procrastinating and needed to continue on their movie.

But guess what? It's been eight years and they still haven't done anything, except for that stupid film contest where they were almost killed by a zombie from the local cemetery. Besides that, nothing. Zero, zilch, nada. In a way, it made Josh uneasy that they were on their way to becoming the wrinkled geesers they had seen the day of their arrival with little or no achievement in their adult lives. All of that would be from now until seventy-two years in the future. Josh shivered.

He was sent back to Earth when Parker started tapping him on the shoulder. "Come on, Josh, you can tell me." said Parker. He paused. "Were you being kicked in your backside by a unicorn?" he teased.

"Hey, I do not have nightmares about that incident!" said Josh defensively. Then he added, "Even though it might have scarred me for life."

"Well, if it wasn't that, than what were you dreaming about?" asked Parker once again.

Josh sighed. He then decided that if he censored out some of the bad details about his self disappointment that Parker wouldn't have to worry about him as much. "Well… it's nothing really. I was just driving like a maniac until I drove myself off that hill with my driver's education teacher." He was relieved to see his best friend's face calm and understanding. "You should have seen that guy, he had this retarded beard about two feet long, spoke in an Indian accent, and looked like a Rabbi on steroids." This received a snort from Parker. Josh smirked an moved on. "I mean, the guy called me a maniac, but hey, if you want to live in Scaunchboro, you'd get a better reputation for not growing a beard that looks like you got it fresh from Dumbledore's chest hair."

Parker was now red in the face with laughter. "It's not Dumbledore's fault that you are in fact a maniac driver! Did you do that thing where you just randomly started to spin on the road?"

Josh rolled his eyes. "Can't we both just admit that I'm a better driver now than I was then?" he was glad he could find something to laugh at now at that past situation.

"I guess. Thank God!" said Parker. He rubbed his forehead and said, "Yet again, you currently have someone else's injury to take care of."

"Oh, sorry abut that." mumbled Josh, slowly getting out of bed to get a better look at Parker. In the early morning light he could see a dark purple bruise forming on Parker's forehead. "Man, I did that?" he asked in awe.

"I can't believe I'm saying it, but yes. Ever since the end of senior year, you've been getting _slightly _stronger, my friend."

Josh scoffed. "Yeah, right, I've _been_ stronger since junior year."

Parker snorted. "Either way," he said with a yawn. "You're going to be the one to get the first aid kit." With that, he crashed into his bed across the room, the springs creaking with all his weight.

Twenty minutes later, the only thing breaking the silence in the apartment room were Parker's snores. Josh lay awake, watching the sunlight slowly rise onto the suburban rooftops and businesses. One thing kept bothering him: Would there ever be a way for him and Parker to change their fate besides going back to their teenage selves as elderly men? Then again, Josh thought, he would have plenty of time in his life to plan it out. Right now, though, was a time to let everything settle before him.

Minutes passed, and Josh began to drift to sleep. Before he drifted off, he thought he saw a metallic meteor blaze into the atmosphere over Scaunchboro. He dismissed this as a dream and fell asleep.

**Sooooooooo, that was my first chapter! Kind of a cliff hanger, isn't it? This is my first fanfic, so don't go all Joan Crawford on me for making it be for Mr. Meaty! XD Since Mr. Meaty isn't visited much, anyone, and I mean ANYONE who stumbles across this must read and review please! P.S., I do not own Mr. Meaty, my mind isn't that warped :P .**


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